Sunday, 10 December 2017

Melanie Friesen wanted to eat my book

When
Melanie Friesen, Martin Scorsese's former head of development, was in
London last year we met at Housmans Bookshop where her old friend,
the late Heathcote Williams, was talking about his book about Boris
Johnson. On her flight home to Vancouver she started reading 'Left
Field' and this is what she later wrote to me.

"A note to say how
much I enjoyed LEFT FIELD. My comments below are a bit trivial, but
they connected me with your writing, so I could be on board
throughout the book. I enjoyed the read and suffered the total
despair of your myriad attempts to get the show on the road with War
Child in spite of so many battles, including egos. What a triumph all
the same.

The childhood in an
autobiography/biography interests me the most because it’s watching
how the seedling grew and seeing what might have influenced it. I
also like to connect to childhood events that the writer mentions, as
it brings me closer to the book.

Also how many books
have notes at the back that are just as interesting as the text?

Some examples with
your book:

Your description and
recipe of your mom’s roast potatoes: My mom wasn’t interested in
cooking, nor in any household activity, so she got several jobs which
interested her very much in order to pay for a housekeeper. I adore
food and the description of these potatoes had me gnawing on the
spine of the book. Luckily I was on the Air Canada flight back to
Vancouver while reading it and the meal on board was so disgusting
that no one found it unusual that I was trying to eat my reading
material (JUST KIDDING!)

The horror and
fascination of you staring at your dad’s concentration camp photos:
Cripes I remember that so well. I think I mentioned that mom’s
whole family except her parents and brother – i.e., her
grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts – were all gassed at
Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Just the words ARBEIT MACHT FREI give
me the worst chills. So I was with you on that page.

Thomas Dormandy: My
mom was born in Slovakia of Hungarian parents and immigrated to Chile
in 1939. Her mother tongue was Hungarian. In 1956, she worked in
Vancouver at the docks and the airports translating for Hungarian
immigrants and got many of them homes and jobs. As a result, I love
Thomas as much as your dad did. If he is still alive, send him this song, the only Hungarian song I can sing. Nothing brings my
childhood back like this tune (well, that’s not completely true; a
million things bring it back):

“I
also got a good grade in history. I couldn’t stand the present so I
concentrated on the past.” Utterly, David, utterly, hence me
enlisting in Whitechapel guided tours at night about Jack the Ripper.
Fuck the shard, bring on St. Paul’s through the mist.

Your Argentinean
experiences are exactly that, but I found many of them very Chilean,
since I have been there to see family 4 or 5 times. Love that you
arrived in Rosario where Che was born. Ever since my Nov. 2015 trip
to Cuba, I hold him in even higher esteem than ever.

The para. about the
Muslim and Jewish prohibition on pork – so spot on. The only focus
of all religions is to love one another and do what we can for one
another. What to eat and what not to eat, the coffers of The Vatican
totalling trillions of euros and whipping oneself during Lent are
hardly part of doing unto others and we would like done unto us.

Re: Yoruba having the
highest rate of twin in the world – Wilmette, Illinois has the
highest rate of multiple births in the US – that's where my
identical twin nephews were born. Love it – Yoruba and Wilmette.

The Museum of Broken
Relationships in Zagreb – Never having heard of it, but thinking it
a great idea, I read about it on the internet. I think it must be
very comforting for those who are sad about a break-up to go there
and be comforted by many others who have done same.

Best line in the book
(re: Ivo): “When he played his accordion, he looked as though he
was telling himself a joke.”

You mention Bob
Hoskins – I was an extra in PENNIES FROM HEAVEN since I knew the
producer, Ken Trodd, and I was broke at the time.

You mention Rebecca
West: In 1976 I did some secretarial work for her in her Kensington
flat. She showed me a tea set that Queen Mary had admired and said,
“When royalty said they liked something, one was supposed to gift
them with it. But I didn’t.” She left me my pay on the
mantelpiece but I didn’t take it because I felt sorry for her,
thinking she was old and lonely. What a drip I was, I’m sure she
could afford to pay me and I was so broke.

I love the quotations
that open some of the chapters, my favourite being the one by Milan
Kundera: “… for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not
even one’s own pain weighs as heavy as the pain one feels with
someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and
prolonged by a hundred echoes.” (Although I think it should read,
“weighs as heavy as the pain,” but maybe that was the way it was
translated.)

The quotation from
ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT is also as powerful as it gets. That
was the book/film that turned my mom into a pacifist.

After the enormous
ups and downs of War Child, the simplicity of your, “an injury to
one is an injury to all,” harkens right back to my comment above
re: being religious or spiritual is not about passing on the bacon.
It is this and only this.

“Enid was a wrestling fan and had a friend with whom she went to matches at
Wembley …” It’s quite a leap and not at all relevant to your
book, but when I worked for Scorsese, he was going to produce a film
directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Sean Penn based on the book by
Joyce Carol Oates called YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS. It’s about a girl,
Enid, who falls into immature love with her Uncle Felix, a boxer: To
see you refer to an Enid and wrestling brought the book straight to
my mind and the meeting I had with the 3 men mentioned above. The
film never happened, too bad – it was the right teams for the
story.

Well, the next
Margarita is on me, thank you so very much for giving me your book
and for giving Anne the last say in it!